tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/fact-checking-7041/articlesFact-checking – The Conversation2018-03-30T03:09:06Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/939972018-03-30T03:09:06Z2018-03-30T03:09:06ZWhy you stink at fact-checking<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212708/original/file-20180329-189798-1e5kzp3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;rect=440%2C350%2C4805%2C3341&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">We don&#39;t automatically question information we read or hear.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/true-false-choice-on-keyboard-490626529">Gaelfphoto/Shutterstock.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Here’s a quick quiz for you:</p>
<ul>
<li>In the biblical story, what was Jonah swallowed by?</li>
<li>How many animals of each kind did Moses take on the Ark? </li>
</ul>
<p>Did you answer “whale” to the first question and “two” to the second? Most people do … even though they’re well aware that it was Noah, not Moses who built the ark in the biblical story.</p>
<p>Psychologists <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=AUtiwQQAAAAJ&amp;hl=en&amp;oi=ao">like me</a> call this phenomenon <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00273">the Moses Illusion</a>. It’s just one example of how people are very bad at picking up on factual errors in the world around them. Even when people know the correct information, they often fail to notice errors and will even go on to use that incorrect information in other situations. </p>
<p>Research from cognitive psychology shows that people are naturally poor fact-checkers and it is very difficult for us to compare things we read or hear to what we already know about a topic. In what’s been called an era of “fake news,” this reality has important implications for how people consume journalism, social media and other public information. </p>
<h2>Failing to notice what you know is wrong</h2>
<p>The Moses Illusion has been studied repeatedly since the 1980s. It occurs with a variety of questions and the key finding is that – even though people know the correct information – they don’t notice the error and proceed to answer the question.</p>
<p>In the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(81)90165-1">original study</a>, 80 percent of the participants failed to notice the error in the question despite later correctly answering the question “Who was it that took the animals on the Ark?” This failure occurred even though participants were warned that some of the questions would have something wrong with them and were given an example of an incorrect question.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212700/original/file-20180329-189830-2fvsmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212700/original/file-20180329-189830-2fvsmf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Who lined the animals up two by two?</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Noahs_Ark.jpg">Edward Hicks</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Moses Illusion demonstrates what psychologists <a href="http://marshlab.psych.duke.edu/publications/MarshCantorBrashier2016.pdf">call knowledge neglect</a> – people have relevant knowledge, but they fail to use it. </p>
<p>One way my colleagues and I have studied this knowledge neglect is by having people read fictional stories that <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-596X(03)00092-5">contain true and false information about the world</a>. For example, one story is about a character’s summer job at a planetarium. Some information in the story is correct: “Lucky me, I had to wear some huge old space suit. I don’t know if I was supposed to be anyone in particular – maybe I was supposed to be Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon.” Other information is incorrect: “First I had to go through all the regular astronomical facts, starting with how our solar system works, that Saturn is the largest planet, etc.”</p>
<p>Later, we give participants a trivia test with some new questions (Which precious gem is red?) and some questions that relate to the information from the story (What is the largest planet in the solar system?). We reliably find positive effects of reading the correct information within the story – participants are more likely to answer “Who was the first person to step foot on the moon?” correctly. We also see negative effects of reading the misinformation – participants are both less likely to recall that Jupiter is the largest planet and they are more likely to answer with Saturn. </p>
<p>These negative effects of reading false information occur even when the incorrect information directly contradicts people’s prior knowledge. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028649">In one study</a>, my colleagues and I had people take a trivia test two weeks before reading the stories. Thus, we knew what information each person did and did not know. Participants still learned false information from the stories they later read. In fact, they were equally likely to pick up false information from the stories when it did and did not contradict their prior knowledge. </p>
<h2>Can you improve at noticing incorrect info?</h2>
<p>So people often fail to notice errors in what they read and will use those errors in later situations. But what can we do to prevent this influence of misinformation?</p>
<p>Expertise or greater knowledge seems to help, but it <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2016.1152377">doesn’t solve the problem</a>. Even biology graduate students will attempt to answer distorted questions such as “Water contains two atoms of helium and how many atoms of oxygen?” – though they are less likely to answer them than history graduate students. (The pattern reverses for history-related questions.) </p>
<p>Many of the interventions my colleagues and I have implemented to try to reduce people’s reliance on the misinformation have failed or even backfired. One initial thought was that participants would be more likely to notice the errors if they had more time to process the information. So, we presented the stories in a book-on-tape format and slowed down the <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/PBR.15.1.180">presentation rate</a>. But instead of using the extra time to detect and avoid the errors, participants were even more likely to produce the misinformation from the stories on a later trivia test.</p>
<p>Next, we tried <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2010.543908">highlighting the critical information in a red font</a>. We told readers to pay particular attention to the information presented in red with the hope that paying special attention to the incorrect information would help them notice and avoid the errors. Instead, they paid additional attention to the errors and were thus more likely to repeat them on the later test. </p>
<p>The one thing that does seem to help is to act like a professional fact-checker. When participants are instructed to edit the story and highlight any inaccurate statements, they are <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-013-0339-0">less likely to learn misinformation</a> from the story. Similar results occur when participants read the stories sentence by sentence and <a href="https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193260">decide whether each sentence contains an error</a>.</p>
<p>It’s important to note that even these “fact-checking” readers miss many of the errors and still learn false information from the stories. For example, in the sentence-by-sentence detection task participants caught about 30 percent of the errors. But given their prior knowledge they should have been able to detect at least 70 percent. So this type of careful reading does help, but readers still miss many errors and will use them on a later test.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212713/original/file-20180329-189798-1rxpa05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/212713/original/file-20180329-189798-1rxpa05.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our natural mode isn’t to critically push back against all information we encounter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://pixabay.com/en/reading-newspapaer-newspaper-man-2706960/">hitesh014/Pixabay.com</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Quirks of psychology make us miss mistakes</h2>
<p>Why are human beings so bad at noticing errors and misinformation? Psychologists believe that there are at least two forces at work. </p>
<p>First, people have a general bias to <a href="https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.46.2.107">believe that things are true</a>. (After all, most things that we read or hear are true.) In fact, there’s some evidence that we initially process all statements as true and that it then takes cognitive effort to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.65.2.221">mentally mark them as false</a>.</p>
<p>Second, people tend to accept information as long as it’s close enough to the correct information. Natural speech often includes errors, pauses and repeats. (“She was wearing a blue – um, I mean, a black, a black dress.”) One idea is that to maintain conversations we need to go with the flow – accept information that is “good enough” and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.00158">just move on</a>.</p>
<p>And people don’t fall for these illusions when the incorrect information is obviously wrong. For example, people don’t try and answer the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(81)90165-1">question</a> “How many animals of each kind did Nixon take on the Ark?” and people don’t believe that Pluto is the largest planet after reading it in a <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13421-013-0359-9">fictional story</a>.</p>
<p>Detecting and correcting false information is difficult work and requires fighting against the ways our brains like to process information. Critical thinking alone won’t save us. Our psychological quirks put us at risk of falling for misinformation, disinformation and propaganda. <a href="https://factcheckingday.com/">Professional fact-checkers provide an essential service</a> in hunting out incorrect information in the public view. As such, they are one of our best hopes for zeroing in on errors and correcting them, before the rest of us read or hear the false information and incorporate it into what we know of the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93997/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lisa Fazio receives funding from the Rita Allen Foundation. </span></em></p>Cognitive psychologists know the way our minds work means we not only don't notice errors and misinformation we know are wrong, we also then remember them as true.Lisa Fazio, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Vanderbilt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/384262015-03-10T03:33:06Z2015-03-10T03:33:06ZFactCheck: can you change a violent drinking culture by changing how people drink?<blockquote>
<p>You can’t change a culture by simply changing drinking. It is, of course, justifiable to explore the effectiveness of small measures such as advertising restrictions, increases or decreases in price, relaxation or restriction of hours, but such things tinker at the margins of culture and it is doubtful that they will alter the culture of violence and anti-social behaviour in any meaningful way. – Dr Anne Fox, author of a <a href="http://www.lionco.com/content/u12/Dr%20Anne%20Fox%20report.pdf">report</a> released by the Lion alcohol company, January 2015.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The Lion alcohol company recently released a <a href="http://www.lionco.com/content/u12/Dr%20Anne%20Fox%20report.pdf">report</a> on Australian and New Zealand nightlife and violence. The study was conducted by an English anthropologist, Dr Anne Fox, working with a private research company.</p>
<p>In this report, the author visited towns in Australia and New Zealand and reviewed the literature on various drinking cultures. Dr Fox concludes that you can’t change a culture by simply changing drinking patterns.</p>
<p>There is a fair bit of opinion involved in determining the role that “culture” plays in alcohol-fuelled violence. </p>
<p>Dr Fox says we should be focusing on violence, misogyny, and aggressive masculinity. These things play a role, though they are usually poorly defined and require more sophisticated <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24428187">research</a>.</p>
<p>However, the evidence shows that we <em>can</em> make a meaningful difference to curbing a culture of violence and anti-social behaviour by changing drinking patterns.</p>
<p>In fact, there is a massive body of independent research that demonstrates a lack of impact from so-called “culture change” interventions such as <a href="http://www.cochrane.org/CD006748/ADDICTN_social-norms-interventions-are-not-effective-enough-to-reduce-alcohol-misuse-among-university-or-college-students">social norms campaigns</a>, generic <a href="http://www.oxfordscholarship.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199551149.001.0001/acprof-9780199551149">education</a> in schools and occasional mass media campaigns warning of alcohol-related harm.</p>
<p>What the available evidence does show is that many assaults and hospital attendances that can be prevented by simple measures that alter drinking patterns, such as shutting licensed venues a few hours earlier. These measures cost the community very little compared to the vast expenditure on police and emergency services across Australia.</p>
<h2>Global data</h2>
<p>A rigorous body of experimental and observational evidence from around the world provides important insights into the real relationship between alcohol to violence, including that:</p>
<ul>
<li>If you shut the pubs and clubs in town two hours earlier, you see a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20840191">30% to 40% reduction</a> in the number of assaults reported to police and the <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24612319">injuries turning up at emergency in hospital</a>.</li>
<li>If you stop repeat drink drivers from drinking, there is a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23153129">10% reduction</a> in domestic violence cases reported to police state-wide.</li>
<li>People who receive alcohol are <a href="http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.486.6496&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf">more aggressive</a> than those who receive no alcohol or placebo beverages.</li>
<li>Intoxicated subjects <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF00994162">are more likely</a> to administer electric shocks to others when provoked - and when they do shock others, they select a higher voltage.</li>
<li>Alcohol administration to men <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9830248">increases</a> the level of negative verbal behaviour displayed by the men and their partners. </li>
<li>Normally non-violent individuals can become violent <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10463811">when consuming a substantial amount of alcohol</a>. </li>
<li>Heavier consumption of alcohol results in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12436812">conflict situations turning violent</a> between partners. </li>
<li>Alcohol use is more common among <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9122504">serious</a> physical assault <a href="http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FA%3A1007522721430">events</a>.</li>
<li>Consumption of six or more drinks <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12602424">predicts</a> violent events in the family setting.</li>
<li>Blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.19 was <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9830248">reported</a> in violent events compared to an estimated BAC of 0.11 in conflict events that did not include violence. </li>
<li>Treatment for alcohol dependence is associated with <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3215582/">reductions</a> in <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12602429">intimate partner</a> violence, and this reduction is <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7751486">observable</a> up to two years post-treatment.</li>
</ul>
<p><a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12380856">For every hour</a> after midnight that pubs are open, there is a 15% to 20% increase in violence, drink driving <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24612319">and</a> emergency department attendances. Shutting pubs at 3:30am in Newcastle, NSW, rather than 5am, resulted in a <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20840191">37% decrease</a> in assaults. Paradoxically, there has been a <a href="http://www.ndlerf.gov.au/publications/monographs/monograph-46">25% increase</a> in liquor licences in Newcastle and people simply go out earlier and even spend more. </p>
<p>So we do know that straightforward measures such as shutting pubs earlier are <a href="http://www.ndlerf.gov.au/publications/monographs/monograph-43">meaningful</a> in the Australian context, but are extremely unpopular with industry. And across Australia there has been little action from political parties that <a href="http://www.fare.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/Alcohol-Industry-Donations-to-Queensland-Political-Parties-20-January-2015-FINAL.pdf">receive</a> industry <a href="http://www.fare.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Alcohol-Industry-Donations-to-Political-Parties-25-November-FINAL.pdf">donations</a>.</p>
<h2>How does alcohol increase the likelihood of violence?</h2>
<p>Dr Fox makes anecdotal comparisons between countries such as Iceland, Spain and Italy. But put simply, Australia is not Italy. In Italy, when people drink, they drink <a>less</a> on any single drinking occasion than the <a href="http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/lookup/4704.0Chapter756Oct+2010#bingedrinking">average</a> Australian. Dr Fox even relates a personal <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-27/macho-culture-to-blame-for-alcohol-fuelled-violence-dr-anne-fox/6270072">account</a> about how, one night when she was at a bar, some young men started to get rowdy and the bartender gave them whiskey to calm them down.</p>
<p>This might make an engaging story but it falls well short of scientific evidence. We don’t know what happened to the young men later that night when they met on the street outside or when they got home. Real violence often happens in the blink of an eye.</p>
<p>It is well-documented what happens to humans when they drink alcohol: reduced cognitive ability, disinhibition, inability to think of consequences, poor interpretation of social cues and obsessional thinking about single details.</p>
<p>These effects have been found in many studies and are <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2005.00994.x/abstract">reliably replicated</a> across many cultures. </p>
<p>Research from around the world has <a href="http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/world_report/factsheets/pb_violencealcohol.pdf">shown</a> that people are much more likely to be victims of alcohol-related violence when they are heavily intoxicated.</p>
<p>This is why we have responsible service of alcohol laws. When people are drunk, they make poor decisions, especially the decision to keep drinking.</p>
<h2>Verdict</h2>
<p>It’s not correct to say you can’t “alter the culture of violence and anti-social behaviour in any meaningful way” by tackling the way people drink. There is a lot of evidence showing that changing people’s drinking hours and consumption patterns reduces violence and hospital admissions – which is a lot more significant than tinkering at the margins of culture.</p>
<hr>
<h2>Review</h2>
<p>This review is a fair assessment of the question as to whether achieving cultural change is more effective than reducing alcohol related violence by curbing alcohol consumption. </p>
<p>As the reviewer rightly concludes, the evidence that measures to reduce consumption are effective is coherent and persuasive, while arguments to the contrary – including those put forward by Dr Fox – generally rely more on anecdote and intuition than empirical research.</p>
<p>Attempts to change Australia’s drinking culture using education campaigns have a poor record. At best, a small and temporary improvement is reported from some evaluations, while others show no change or even worse outcomes. The drinks industry is capable of spending many, many times more on continual and positive advertising than what governments can afford to spend on intermittent cautionary campaigns. This is not, and never has been, a level playing field. </p>
<p>The evidence is slowly accumulating for some control of alcohol advertising, marketing and promotion, as the current self-regulatory system is widely recognised to be worse than a joke. But no one should underestimate the political difficulties of achieving this. – <strong>Alex Wodak</strong></p>
<hr>
<p><div class="callout"> Have you ever seen a “fact” that doesn’t look quite right? The Conversation’s FactCheck asks academic experts to test claims and see how true they are. We then ask a second academic to review an anonymous copy of the article. You can request a check at checkit@theconversation.edu.au. Please include the statement you would like us to check, the date it was made, and a link if possible.</div></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/38426/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Miller receives funding from Australian Research Council and Australian National Health and Medical Research Council, grants from NSW Government, National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education, Cancer Council Victoria, Queensland government and Australian Drug Foundation, travel and related costs from Australasian Drug Strategy Conference. He is affiliated with academic journal Addiction.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Wodak is president of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.</span></em></p>There is a lot of evidence showing that changing people's drinking hours and consumption patterns reduces violence and hospital admissions.Peter Miller, Principal Research Fellow, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/177812013-09-06T02:02:18Z2013-09-06T02:02:18ZWhen 1+1=1: journalism and the trouble with 'facts'
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30645/original/cwgqngbp-1378257386.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=496&amp;fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There&#39;s no easily defined line between &#39;fact&#39; and &#39;non-fact&#39;, so how do journalists make judgements about factual accuracy?</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A posse of fact-checkers has been riding the boundary of the federal election. Not happy with the standard of honesty in political discourse, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/factcheck/">the ABC</a>, this website and <a href="http://politifact.com.au/">PolitiFact.com.au</a>, a localised version of a US format, staffed mostly by ex-Fairfax journalists, set up operations to check facts in statements made by politicians and others during the campaign.</p>
<p>Isn’t fact-checking what journalists are meant to do already?</p>
<p>Of course it is. And they do. Facts are the building blocks of good reportage, the substance upon which a true and full record of history is built. They are gathered, checked and double-checked before being published in print, on television and radio, and online. At least, that’s the theory.</p>
<p>Journalism has changed. The conversation with the media audience has changed. The competition to be first with news means there is less time to check and confirm every line of a public figure’s statements. The multitude of new avenues for politicians to deliver their unfiltered message to its audience by going around the traditional gatekeepers of the media have changed the nature of information and of the political conversation.</p>
<p>Politicians know this and take advantage of these changes. Facts are spun, taken out of context, cherry-picked or cunningly applied to create a false impression. The fact-checkers’ challenge is how to strip away the noise, lay bare how facts are distorted and to expose the deceit built into the rhetoric of politics.</p>
<p>People think they know a fact when they see one. People should think again.</p>
<p>The truth is that “facts” can be tricky, elusive things.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30653/original/zy94wbbm-1378258629.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The theory is facts are gathered, checked and double-checked before being published, but that’s not always put into practice.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image from shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Here are three facts most would accept on face value:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>1+1=2</p>
<p>Clive Palmer is overweight</p>
<p>The unemployment rate is 5.7%.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The equation 1+1= 2 is self-evident; simple observation and experience tell us it is true. But some cheeky mathematicians take delight in proving that 1+1=1 is <a href="http://mathforum.org/library/drmath/view/57110.html">also true</a>.</p>
<p>They conjure this surprise result by using a numerical sleight-of-hand known as a “mathematical fallacy”. This is, essentially, a well-camouflaged false step, and if you don’t spot the false step or know how to go through the mathematical working to pinpoint where it was introduced, you might be tempted or feel compelled to accept that 1+1=1.</p>
<p>A mathematical fallacy can be created on purpose, as a party trick to impress or challenge fellow numbers geeks at mathematics soirees. A mathematical fallacy can also be accidental, a simple, subtle miscalculation buried in the working that leads to an incorrect result. If not discovered, such mistakes could have potentially fatal consequences – for example, if the error is made by a designer of nuts and bolts used in bridges or space shuttles.</p>
<p>So, it is possible to believe that 1+1=1 is a fact if you don’t think to look for an error, don’t know how to look for an error, or if you don’t know there’s an error to be found. Everyone will know it is wrong, but only a few have the skills to know how to prove it is wrong.</p>
<p>Hold that thought.</p>
<p>Mining magnate Clive Palmer is a larger-than-life character whose physique matches his personality. Even a casual observer can see that he is overweight. But we don’t have to trust the observation of casual observers to know that the statement “Clive Palmer is overweight” is a fact because medical science gives us a definitional tool for the classification of body weight: the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-overweight-obese-bmi-what-does-it-all-mean-7011">body mass index</a>.</p>
<p>The BMI correlates height and weight to arrive at a number. A person is considered to be underweight, overweight or to have a healthy body weight depending on where that number sits <a href="http://www.heartfoundation.org.au/healthy-eating/pages/bmi-calculator.aspx">on a spectrum</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/30648/original/k7j2zbk4-1378258101.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=237&amp;fit=clip">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Technically, St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt is overweight.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP Image/Dave Hunt</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s safe to say that Clive Palmer’s BMI would categorise his weight as
above the ideal for his height. He would sit in the overweight or (according to my dietitian) the obese section of the spectrum.</p>
<p>But consider this: at 193 centimetres and 96 kilograms, Nick Riewoldt –
captain of St Kilda AFL club, superb athlete and fine specimen of a human
being – has a BMI of 25, categorising him as overweight. “Nick Riewoldt is overweight” is as much a fact as “Clive Palmer is overweight” is a fact. Crazy, I know.</p>
<p>Hold that thought, too.</p>
<p>According to the government department responsible for measuring unemployment, the current jobless rate is 5.7%. The statisticians in
the Australian Bureau of Statistics are experts, independent of political
influence, so we have good reason to trust that they know how to measure
unemployment in Australia. The 5.7 figure should be one we can accept as
fact.</p>
<p>But what is being measured? There is considerable debate about the value of unemployment figures. According to a <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/comment/smile-youre-on-candidate-camera-20130825-2sjrn.html">recent column in the Fairfax press</a> the rate does not include roughly 100,000 people who have been moved from the unemployed queues into training schemes. It also does not include those who have given up looking for work, those who work for a family business, or those who do just one hour of paid work each week. Include these categories and you get an unemployment rate of 6.2%.</p>
<p>These three examples help us understand that no fact is an island. Facts are constructed and constrained by social, historical, cultural, scientific and economic factors and cannot exist or be understood outside the context and connections created by those factors. Change the context or the connections and you change the fact. </p>
<p>Fact-checking operations know this and so parse context and connecting factors to arrive at their shades-of-truth rulings, with the tested fact sitting on a spectrum from True through to False via a range of incremental stages (for example PolitiFact’s ratings Half True/False, Partly True/False and Mostly True/False).</p>
<p>Epistemicism is the sub-branch of philosophy that deals with the question of vagueness and inexactness, that border area in which something is going from being one thing to being another. It considers such questions as: At what point does a thin thing become a not-thin thing? Is there a tangible, identifiable definitional line that separates these states?</p>
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<p>If there is, we might ask, is there also a line between non-physical states such as “fact” and “not-a-fact” (or between “fact” and “not the fact supposedly being presented”)? That is, is there a “truth mass index” we can turn to for help, a version of the BMI that can be applied to fact?</p>
<p>And if there isn’t an easily defined line between “fact” and “non-fact”, on what basis do the fact-checkers think they can make judgements about factual accuracy?</p>
<p>The fact-checkers operate in this zone of vagueness and, in practice, they do an effective job. As experienced journalists they know how to examine and expose the rhetorical equivalents of mathematical fallacies. They can identify how definitions and assumptions around, say, unemployment figures have been warped or constructed to achieve a desired result.</p>
<p>Of course, there is argument about the nuances of fact-checkers’ rulings; in the real world that is where subjectivity enters proceedings, and there is no hard and fast way to calculate the impact of personal preference or opinion.</p>
<p>But even without a truth mass index, the checkers could rule that Nick Riewoldt is as healthy a specimen of a human being as you will find. They could also rule that Clive Palmer should stop eating hamburgers.</p>
<p>Because sometimes facts speak for themselves.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/17781/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gordon Farrer was a Fairfax journalist for 13 years.
Fairfax also holds a stake in his current employer, Metro Media Publishing. </span></em></p>A posse of fact-checkers has been riding the boundary of the federal election. Not happy with the standard of honesty in political discourse, the ABC, this website and PolitiFact.com.au, a localised version…Gordon Farrer, PhD candidate in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.